Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Don't Believe the Hype!

Flavor
Flav is a hype man…the hype man. He
is fun, crazy, entertaining, and even a bit talented. With his shades and
grill and goofy hats and that giant clock around his neck, Flav is a standout
in the pioneering hip-hop group Public Enemy. He was the comedic foil to Chuck
D’s intense stage presence and politically charged raps, working the crowd and
punctuating Chuck’s lyrics. He’s even an okay rapper; but a solo artist, Flav
is not. No one goes to a show to watch Flav jump around and yell “Yyeaah, boy!”
for two hours. Without “Fight the Power” and “Rebel Without a Pause” and
“Welcome to the Terrordome,” Flavor Flav is just a classic fool.

Many
in the church have become hype men (and women). We have taken on the role of
getting people “pumped up” about God, pandering to the potential audience to
get them in the doors and jumping up and down. And it works. I’m not talking
about good Christian people who are excited about sharing their faith. I’m
talking about pastors and church leaders who have drunk the Kool-aid,
jettisoned the challenging—even off-putting—leading of God, and are becoming
fools in the process. But I’m here to urge us, in the words of Public Enemy:
“Don’t Believe the Hype!”

We are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken.
How much energy do we in the
church spend on a shakable kingdom, to the neglect of the unshakable kingdom
(Heb. 12:18-29)? We obsess about buildings and productions and numbers (we call
them “metrics” to sound businessy), comparing and competing with each other
over nothing but hype. We ignore walking the path of God’s darkness, God’s
light, and God’s union. But this is exactly the path that the church should be
walking, the path into God’s mystery, into God’s revelation, and into life in
the Trinity. All other paths are dead ends.

What
if our efforts in the shakable kingdom—for surely we must give due attention to
some externals—were all for the sake of the unshakable kingdom? How might the
church do everything, not with thought and motives for attracting people, but all motivated by leading people into God’s
mystery and God’s revelation and God’s abiding presence?

The
domain of nominal Christians and anxious leaders—of shaky churches and shaky
pastors—is, naturally, the shakable kingdom. Those who lead the church with a
mind and heart for attracting people might do just that. How impressive! But
last time I looked, “go into all the world and attract people” is not Christ’s
commission. “But it’s evangelism,” they say. “We’re preaching the gospel to
them.” To which I say, “What gospel are you preaching?”

The
gospel of Jesus Christ has nothing to do with attracting people. I dare say
Christ repelled far more people than he attracted. The gospel of Jesus Christ
is about transforming people…to the glory of God alone. Can the externals be
used to point to this Triune God—the shakable kingdom a pathway to the unshakable?
Oh, they can and they should! But only
that—all things pointing to this God and life in him. We must move on from the shakable
kingdom as soon as possible. Yet the tendency of many is to move in there
permanently.

The
trend for more than a generation has been the opposite of moving from shakable
to unshakable. We have used people’s hunger for God to be the means, and
attracting them to our buildings and productions and swelling organization has
become the end. (Read that again.) We say, “Well, we’re just attracting them to
the church.” But is it really the church they’re coming to? No, we are
attracting them to themselves.

Not
enough people seem to be genuinely hungry for God, so we’ve started serving up
platefuls of what more people are naturally hungry for: entertainment,
affirmation, being part of a large organization that is better than the
competition, superficial connection with others who are like us…a shakable
kingdom.

Let’s
be honest. There’s a line we must walk. We certainly want to offer our best to
God—our architecture, our arts, our organization, the stewardship of externals.
And we do want people to be part of the church…lots of people…every person!
There’s nothing inherently holy about being aloof or small or old-fashioned or
superficially ritualistic. On the contrary! There is no “right” set of
externals that make up the unshakable kingdom.

It
is only the mysterious, illuminating, abiding presence of God that makes up the
unshakable kingdom. What that looks like on the outside is vast and varied. The
only right externals are those that point to God and his kingdom. Any church
must figure out what those things are, finding the harmony of orthodoxy,
mission field, tradition, culture, etc. But they cannot do this by following
trends.

We
must stop turning the church into a Cosmo-girl, seeking superficial advice on
the latest fashions and “how to attract a man” and “getting noticed in 7 easy
steps.” The church and her leaders are unnecessarily anxious, hurried, shaky.
But in the end, only the unshakable will remain.God’s
kingdom doesn’t need another twitchy hype-man. God’s kingdom needs devoted
leaders who are fixed on the Trinity. God’s kingdom needs churches that exist
only to follow God into darkness and light and union, where everything—from the
building to the finances to the worship to the people—points in that direction.
God’s kingdom needs God. The circus of the shakable kingdom might attract
people and dazzle audiences and sell books. The fools might be entertaining.
But don’t believe the hype…yyeaah, boy!

3 comments:

This was so good that I was ready to explode, and then in fact I did explode when I came to the line that says, We must stop turning the church into a Cosmo-girl, seeking superficial advice on the latest fashions and “how to attract a man” and “getting noticed in 7 easy steps.” The church and her leaders are unnecessarily anxious, hurried, shaky. But in the end, only the unshakable will remain.